Fringe Festival: The Edge, the Center and the Kitchen Sink

Joseph Yeargain in Stan Richardson’s “Veritas,” about a 1920 secret court at Harvard that interrogated students thought to be gay.Credit
Joshua Bright for The New York Times

With almost 200 shows in more than a dozen downtown spaces, the 14th annual New York International Fringe Festival, which runs Friday through Aug. 29, is an almost-anything-goes assemblage of theatrical events: surrealism, music, magic, dance, burlesque, stand-up comedy, nudity, puppetry, drag performance and more will be on view.

So how do you decide what to see? Not by asking for suggestions from Elena K. Holy, the festival’s producing artistic director. Sitting in her makeshift office downtown at Fringe Central (box office, headquarters and hangout) one recent afternoon Ms. Holy refused to single out any one production. But she did say that in the midst of the experimentalism that characterizes much of the festival, there are some traditional plays that should not be ignored. “I love plays, and sadly this is one of the few places left to do a new play,” she said. The cost of mounting a full production for an unknown writer or independent producer is prohibitive, she said, and joining with the Fringe helps keep costs down while getting new work up.

To help narrow down the festival’s myriad options here are a few themes and, based on a variety of criteria (never underestimate the importance of a cool-looking postcard), some highlights that seem likely to be worth the price of admission ($15, or $18 at the door). These are only a few potential bright spots, of course. If you decide to choose at random, that’s not a bad way to go either. Part of the fun of the Fringe lies in not knowing what to expect. STEVEN McELROY

AROUND THE WORLD

Several productions explore international political themes that could have been taken from the headlines. In the solo show “For Kingdom and Fatherland,” Shabana Rehman recounts the strangely funny but true story of her life as a Muslim stand-up comedian in Scandinavia.

Ms. Rehman’s lampooning of conservative Islam and some of her public antics — mooning an audience, lifting a Muslim cleric off the ground (“mullah lifting,” she calls it), delivering her routines (partly) in a burqa — landed her in trouble with some Norwegian religious and political leaders. The show she brings to the Fringe details her decision to leave Norway after gunfire shattered the windows at the Oslo restaurant owned by her sister.

“My parents ran away,” said Ms. Rehman, who will be performing her show for the first time in English. (It was originally in Norwegian.) “I had to run away from a free country. How long do we have to be running?”

Citing as inspiration the comedians Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman and Billy Crystal, Ms. Rehman said her sense of humor about Islam, gender and immigration came out of a desire to entertain and debate, not to provoke.“Maybe a mullah or two will be offended,” she said with a laugh. “But hopefully people will start thinking.”

It is not unusual to find gay-and-lesbian-theme plays in the festival, and as always there will be plenty of camp, comedy and comely boys. What is striking this year, though, is the seriousness of several gay plays, with a few based on real people and historical events. “Veritas” is inspired by the true story of a secret court convened at Harvard in 1920 to interrogate — and in many cases expel — students suspected of being homosexuals. The existence of the court was a secret until a student journalist unearthed thousands of papers in 2002.

Stan Richardson, who wrote “Veritas,” read through those papers. One thing that moved him, he said, was a letter by a student who committed suicide about a decade after he was outed. “He just never got his life together,” Mr. Richardson said. “He never got over the shock of being expelled from Harvard.”

Mr. Richardson said he found the personal issues most striking, so his play is not a courtroom drama. “I really wanted to focus on these boys and their lives as this was taking place, as friends and acquaintances they knew were being called in and interrogated,” he said. “The play is kind of like a proper burial for these guys.”

Some other serious plays on gay issues:

¶“The Twentieth-Century Way,” by Tom Jacobson, about another little-known chapter in history: in 1914, when two actors were hired by the Long Beach, Calif., Police Department to entrap homosexual men in public restrooms by luring them into offering sex.

¶“Dear Harvey,” by Patricia Loughrey, about the San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, based on interviews with people who knew him or were influenced by him.

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¶“Open Heart,” by Joe Salvatore, based on transcripts of interviews with gay men talking candidly about the ups and downs of open relationships. STEVEN McELROY

MARQUEE NAMES

Hinton Battle is a respected actor, director and choreographer with three Tony Awards. So why is he directing and choreographing the tiny-budget Fringe musical “Terms of Dismemberment,” about a woman who sells her daughters’ body parts to pay off her dead husband’s Mafia debts?

“It’s really out there,” he said with a laugh. “It’s roughing it. But what I like is that it forces you to be creative and come up with ways to use your imagination to suggest or reinvent things. I’m meeting new talent and new actors and hungry actors that are willing to do stuff.”

Mr. Battle said that working on a show backed by more enthusiasm than money reminded him of his early years in theater. What experience has provided him with, he said, is peace of mind behind the scenes.

Photo

A scene from “Evan O’Television in Double Negatives.”Credit
Joshua Bright for The New York Times

“The great thing about doing this for so long is that you know how to do it,” he said. “You know how to be creative. If it doesn’t work, don’t kill yourself, just make it work. That’s knowledge you can’t buy.”

Mr. Battle is just one of several established artists at the Fringe eschewing bigger-budget projects in favor of more modest works. Other shows that come with a degree of pedigree include:

¶“Burning in China,” a play about Tiananmen Square directed by the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, father of the actresses Emily and Zooey Deschanel.

¶“Platinum,” a revival of the Broadway flop with a book by Will Holt and Bruce Vilanch. ERIK PIEPENBURG

AMAZING FEATS

There is always a decent representation of clowns, mimes, jugglers, dancers, magicians and burlesque performers at the Fringe. This year more extreme than that motley group is the contortionist Jonathan Nosan, who will present his autobiographical solo show, “Bagabones.”

Mr. Nosan has been many things: student of Asian studies at University of California, Berkeley; Fulbright scholar living in the mountains of Kyoto; student of physical theater in London; street performer in Nagasaki; and, for the past 15 years, contortionist. Today he can bend himself into seemingly impossible physical positions. Just looking at pictures of him in action can give you a backache.

His show is a “kind of a performance art memoir,” he said in a telephone interview. “It has five scenes, and each scene has a connection with what I term a past life in this life.” Contortionism was never really a goal. “I started at 21 not able to touch my toes,” he said. “I wasn’t naturally flexible. I wasn’t a dancer, I wasn’t a gymnast. I was a geek. I was an academic.” So can anyone learn to contort? “We have so much potential that we just don’t tap into,” he said. “Everybody has a point further than they think they can go.”

Some other shows about, or including, amazing feats:

¶“American Gypsy,” by the writer-performer Ben Whiting, who uses sleight-of-hand magic to tell the story of Jim Cellini, a little-known street magician who died last year.

¶“Playing by Air,” employs juggling, circus acts, physical comedy and dance to tell a story about a violinist in search of inspiration.

COST $15 in advance, $18 at the door, $10 for 65+ and for children under 12 (for FringeJR shows only).

WORTH TRYING Slice-o-Matic on the Fringe Web site allows you to search for shows by date, start time, theater, neighborhood, genre and cultural influence.

A version of this article appears in print on August 13, 2010, on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Fringe Festival: The Edge, the Center And the Kitchen Sink. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe